Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 2-3.

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First I want to comment on Luke’s comment about the census happening when Quirinius was governor of Syria.  Some people argue that Quirinius was not governor of Syria until well after the death of Herod the Great, which would create a contradiction with the account of Jesus birth in the Gospel of Matthew.  So, there are multiple problems with that argument.  The first one is that the Greek here could be translated as “This was the registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria.”  I am unsure of why they suggest that as a possible translation, but that would eliminate the conflict between the death of Herod the Great and the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.  Second, recently archeologists have found inscriptions which suggest that Quirinius was governor in Syria earlier than originally thought (the current understanding of those inscriptions is that Quirinius functioned as governor of Syria for two separate terms).  Finally, the dates for both Herod the Great’s death and Quirinius’ term as governor are primarily based on the writings of Josephus and Josephus is known for being imprecise in his dates.

There are two other things I want to bring up.  In chapter 2 verse 7, Luke says “she gave birth to her firstborn son…”  The fact that Luke says that Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son suggests that she had at least one son after the birth of Jesus.  Not everyone agrees with that understanding, but it supports other passages which carry similar implications.  I also want to point out that Luke also says at a couple of points that Mary treasured all of these things in her heart.  That supports the theory I proposed yesterday that Mary was Luke’s source for everything he recounts up until the beginning of Chapter three.  Chapter three would start to relay information which Luke could have gotten from multiple of Jesus’ early disciples.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.